


Paper Scraps

by a_fool



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 02:59:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16547540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_fool/pseuds/a_fool
Summary: Have you ever wanted to see an original world?Have you ever wanted to hallucinate floating on an island or having an excessive amount of plants everywhere?Do you love it when at least all of the main characters are sarcastic arseholes that hate each other to some degree?Have you ever wanted a story that goes from 1300s Britain to Space Age Mars, but Britain and Mars don't actually exist?If you answered yes OR NO to any of these questions, this is the place for you!(just a bunch of drabbles that interconnect somehow)





	Paper Scraps

Everything was white.

Not a dull white, like a piece of paper or nail polish. It was an aggressive, blinding, got-up-to-see-a-text-and-forgot-my-phone-was-on-full-brightness type of white. Gaster had to shut his eyes so that he didn’t get an immediate migraine, and even then there was a warning pounding in his skull.   
The elf racked his brains to figure out where the prophetic dreams had brought him this time, and an old book description floated lazily through;

 

FILE VOID,

The last remnants of a universe, world, or dimension that has been destroyed or moved. These Voids are characterised by being either white or black, with one to three structures that held significance to the original denizens. Relative time and distance in these Voids is incalculable.  
 _See pg.159 for more information on the destruction and movement of universes, worlds, and dimensions._

 

The thoughts following mostly consisted of _Fuck it’s bright, I hope this isn’t the future,_ and _Why is someone screaming?_  
Wait a moment. Screaming?  
Gaster turned a half circle to find what must be one of the Void’s now-insignificant structures.  
It was a tree.

 

Not some tiny little apple tree, though. It made the ancient Northern redwoods look like matchsticks, even without a world of towns and mountains to dwarf.   
It was also the source of the screaming. Gaster realised after a moment that it wasn’t an external sound, but one he was picking up through his mind. Tentatively, he began walking.

The tree’s roots found themselves a few centimetres away, making Gaster jump. From an unknowably high branch above, a leaf fluttered its way down, finally resting on Gaster’s head and startling him into action again. The wailing in his mind was not louder, as it would be if it was on the physical plane, but he simply knew it was closer.

 

The tree was ill. Gaster felt the disease eating it away as he clambered onto a van-wide root and resumed his quest. It looked like the trunk was a kilometre away, and the trunk was where the action was at.   
If the journey took him any time at all, he couldn’t measure it.

 

In one of the trunk’s mighty grooves, there was a skeleton. He was facing away, hunched over and resembling a ball of sadness. On the physical plane, he was silent, but on the mental that roaring grief was still screaming. Gaster took a deep breath, a part of his mind saying _This is stupid_ even as he put a hand on the skeleton’s shoulder.

 

 

The world stuttered like a bad video game. Nausea drove him to his knees and a wave of ocean spray hit him in the face.   
A ravine split the world, cliffside dropping terrifyingly far instead of the featureless landscape. The terrible white turned to drab greys as the sea leapt up at him.  
Lightning struck the rock behind, staying long enough to burn his back, and he turned shakily as it left.

 

Standing on the healing rock, half-hidden in steam as rain met slag, was the skeleton from before. Intensely blue eyes glared at him, sparking angry electricity that reached for Gaster like claws.

The elf stumbled back in fear as the skeleton strode toward him, his boot met empty air, and he tumbled backwards—

 

 

 

Only to wake. His room was illuminated with faint, pre-dawn light, dulling its colours to calm blues that only made him think of the skeleton in his dream. An animated construct, known to the world as Tim, was tending to one of his plants. It looked up as he fought to breathe normally, waved a little, and returned to its task without a care in the world.

Gods, Gaster envied it at that moment. He felt like someone had plunged him in ice-water and a furnace simultaneously. He didn’t dream fantasy. Somewhere, sometime, _someone was out to kill him.  
_ Slowly, he crawled out of bed and began collecting his thoughts. He should tell Maiya first thing. She’d know what to do.

 

Normally, it took around four minutes to get from his room to the rooftop’s garden. Three floors of bedrooms and another of utility, just on this side of the creaky old island, lay in that distance. The staircases seemed to change every time he blinked, and every corridor was the same and yet unique, making it more difficult to traverse than a Fae wood.  
This time, sleepy and nervous as he was, the journey was closer to ten.

The sky was turning to outrageous orange as Gaster stumbled through the vine-choked doorway. Maiya was about ten metres away, standing on the island’s edge and watching the dawn. As quietly as he could, Gaster stood close by, a little away from the drop. As dawn faded to ordinary day, she decided to acknowledge him.  
“You’re up early.”  
“I had a dream.”  
She grunted, neither interested or not so. Gaster went on to describe his nightmare, shuddering at the memory of his terror. When he finished, she was silent and still for a long minute. He fidgeted nervously.

Slowly, Maiya nodded, as though coming to a decision.

“What are we going to do?” Gaster heckled, worry reducing his patience.

“Well. _You_ are going to finish dead-heading the roses. Blackberries are in season, so go lookin’ fer them as well. Cake’d be nice with some in it. I, on the other hand, am going to make a phone call.” She clapped him on the shoulder good-naturedly, making his knees buckle, and went inside.

 

 

 

The sun, today, was determined to burn people. Gaster could feel its bite, even under the shade of trees thousands of years old, as he snipped roses’ heads off their stems. Nearby, Tim the construct had attached a speaker to its stumpy neck. As an animated armour stand, it had no head, hands or feet, instead wearing an old helmet and gauntlets to suffice. Right now, it was trying -and failing- to fit gardening gloves over the previously mentioned gauntlets. It was not the smartest tool in the shed, and could go on trying until the rubber disintegrated.  
“Oy, clothes-rack!”   
“Whaa?” The construct looked up, turning the volume down on its stereo.  
“Have you considered taking the gauntlets _off_ first?”  
A full minute passed, ‘Hooked On A Feeling’ blasting out as the only sound.  
“Oh.” And with that, Tim pulled the gauntlets off, put gardening gloves on, and began work.

Gaster took a deep breath of the fresh air, sighing it out contentedly. Up here, the world was quiet in a way beyond the lack of buzzing cars and thousands of voices. It was quiet in his _mind_. The household’s construct staff all had a multicolour array in place of thoughts, sparkled with animation magic. Their emotion came off as little more than the island’s flora and fauna.

Maiya’s existence was dulled by the simple fact that her mind was in a completely different language. She was ten meters away right now, but could have been floating around the Mardus Complex for all he could hear from her.

It was the most peace he’d had since never, and he _loved_ it.

 

Unfortunately, Jason ruined it. The construct existed purely to manage phones and accounting. It wobbled up to Maiya and murmured quietly, stepping back as she jumped up.

“We’ve gotta run, guests!” And with that, she jumped off the island’s edge. Gaster flinched- he’s seen her pull stunts like that before, but it still terrified him. Luckily, Maiya was a shapeshifter, and she could morph into all manner of flying creatures. Gaster was reduced to running down the stairs and over a shaky, half-rotten bridge to get to the front entryway. By the time he got there, Maiya was making tea and talking to someone new. One thing his eccentric landlord adored was talking. If such things had a competition, Maiya would hold a winning streak centuries long.

Her chatter was distraction enough for him to realise the newcomer’s mind was in the same strange language as hers. Was it coincidence? Apparently not, as Maiya introduced him as “My bro, Nex!” the second she realised he was there.

 

“Are you actually a satyr?” He grimaced at the idea, and she chuckled. “Naw, kid, ’s not by blood. Nex this is my tenant and gardening pal, Gaster!”

“Hi,” Gaster waved awkwardly. The stranger levelled an intense stare on him.

“You have that bright-colour syndrome.”

“Uh- yes, sir.”

“Hmm. That mutation continues to crop up.” Nex took a sip of tea, making the gesture seem regal, and turned to Maiya with an official air, dismissing Gaster at the same time.

“Very well, then. Let us get down to business.”

 

 

 

‘Business’, it seemed, was not a particularly formal affair. In fact, it was so casual Gaster couldn’t think that anything important was actually being said. Nex and Maiya exchanged funky bits of information like the price of gold or precipitation rates. They had tea in copious amounts, as well as biscuits and, as the sun dipped, dinner.

Only after their meal did things get obviously serious. Nex steeples his polished nails together and sighed with the air of a harbinger.

“Fahi is dead,” he began.

“Shit!” Maiya exclaimed, only to be cut off by the satyr.

“It gets worse. Two of the others are going senile. Several are falling ill. Some, we cannot locate.” Nex spread his hands plaintively. “There is little left, sister. The plan cannot continue without the primary elements.”

Gaster frowned, wondering what was happening and how it had anything to do with his dream, as Maiya got up and began pacing.

“We cannot afford to loose. Luckily, I have a lead that may help.”

“How so?”

At this, Maiya made a gesture towards Gaster. “My friend here is an empath, telepath, and part-time clairvoyant. He’s also the reason I called you today, as last night he had a dream about someone trying to kill him.”

There was a moment of silence.

“And this helps us _how_?” Nex asked, clearly unimpressed.

“It was a skeleton, and a storm elemental at that, trying to do so. Not many of those around these days. Cobalt was one of them.”

Maiya paused, taking a long sip of tea, before continuing, “And if Gaster’s dream is predicting the future, it means he’s _alive_ , Nex, and very likely to be on a coastline.”

 

“That limits us to ten percent of the _world_ , Maiya. Besides which, we don’t know that this child’s powers are strong enough to be accurate.”

Gaster interjected, “I’m more concerned that you’re trying to find someone that _wants to murder me_.” Both siblings ignored him in favour of their own argument.

“That’s ninety percent that we don’t have to search, though! Besides, a murderous, half-missing pawn is better than your dead one.”

“Still upset about that whole ‘death’ thing we’re talking about—“

“I couldn’t stop Fahi from dying—“

“Alright, Nex, hope you brought bags because you might as well stay here while we go—“

“It’s going to take years to search all the coastline towns, Maiya!” Nex roars, making the other two pause. When he had their attention, he calmed down, “We need to plan this first. We’ll start with his home continent, because it is quite likely that he tried to stay there. And while we look, you can figure out how we’re going to get him to cooperate.”

“Oh, brother, that’s the easy part! We’ll just kidnap him!”

 


End file.
